Avoiding UPFs at breakfast

[Ayechinnyreckon]

After breakfast we eat virtually no UPFs but the kids breakfast is a huge issue.

They wake early and are hungry. They're 9&6 so can be trusted to go downstairs, get themselves some cereal and occupy themselves in the morning until we get up.

They eat cereal and pastries mainly until we get up and make a more substantial breakfast if they want it) 90mins - 2 hours later.

AIBU to want quick and easy breakfast that the DC can get themselves? So I don't have to get up at 5.30!

I realised alot about food when weaning my girls. Smoothie bowls are an option (jo wicks has some recipes) they have avocado, banana, oats, chia seeds and berries in. Annabel karmel who writes weaning books has some good recipes - Banana and date muffins. I do Pancakes, but the mixture put into a baking tray so no standing and flipping, add in some oats too for substance. Sainsburys does organic bread.

Probably because they're eating sweet, processed, nutritionally void foods and getting hungry again when their blood sugar crashes? Literally the point of the thread isn't it.

Back when mine were children cereals were full of sugar, and yet in their 30s now and have never had any work on their teeth , they are ultra healthy and so are any other person from that time I know.

And there's always someone who knows someone who smoked 50 a day and lived to 103. Why are people so scared and ignorant of the science that they're determined to stick their head in the ground? Guilt?

Jason’s sourdough is sold almost everywhere now and great bread, with not too much crap added. Shame the flour is fortified but that is what the law stipulates sadly. It’s a great choice.

Hovis does a wholegrain preservative free bread at Sainsbury's, and they also do an own brand organic whole wheat bread

*this should say about 16 dates

Ive seen on threads people slagging off bread, all cereals, yoghurts, pasta, canned foods, more than I cant think of right now. All perfectly ok foods. Mainly people getting muddled with processed foods

By all means dont be feeding kids absolute junk, reconstituted foods, food that isnt even food but processing a food doesnt make it junk.

Also this. My parents didn’t have the internet and information travelling at the speed of light so we can say they didn’t know better. With rates of auto immune disease and cancers sky rocketing I think we need to start really looking at diet and understanding that the implications of a poor diet don’t always present until later down the line. We know better, we should do better. My mum doesn’t begrudge me for feeding my kids healthier than she did us. She’s very supportive and has actually removed sugar from her diet and all her aches and pains diminished so much!

Food is all about moderation not banning foods people are going to give their children food issues don't be an almond mum.

@soupfiend the foods you've listed aren't blanket bad or good. Greek yoghurt = good, "children's" multi coloured artificially favoured and artificially sweetened = bad.

Same with bread, there is terrible UPF bread that is full of preservatives, designed to be soft and to make you eat more with very little nutritional value, but homemade bread can negate those affects and whole grain add some nutrition. And it's a sliding scale of course from the cheapest white loaf to homemade wholemeal.

Same with canned foods, some are laden with salt and sugar, I choose to buy organic baked beans.

I don't think people are demonising "perfectly fine foods" as you say, but that there is a lot of misleading marketing as to what is healthy.

Definitely not an almond mum!

I dont believe in a good or bad food at all actually despite describing someting as healthy, I do that becuase thats the language of this forum to be honest

The point Im making is that people do make blanket comments about all things and quite honestly there is very little difference between organic baked beans and baked beans, nothing wrong with bake beans.

I dont demonize fat, sugar or carbs, I eat them in the proportions that I personally need which will probably not be what suits someone else

Ive seen people convinced (to the extent they argue black is white) that tinned toms have sugar in them, that ready brek has sugar in it for example. Lots of other examples that as I say I cant remember right now.

Op I'd also be mindful of people's advice on mumsnet i would love to know how many people are sat behind a screen saying how they only cook from scratch and upf are the devil when in reality they fed their kids mcdonalds for tea and are now sat there with a chocolate biscuit in one hand and a glass of wine in the other

All those educated about UPF are fully aware of the difference between minimally processed, processed and ultra-processed. The majority of your examples are not UPF. As PP have pointed out, most supermarket bread and cereals are UPF and therefore are pretty much reconstituted foods.

There are some who are obsessed - I have seen posts where people analyse yeast/stock cubes etc and then label an entire meal a UPF due to their presence when they make up such little of the final product. This is nonsensical as Van Tulleken himself always talks about 80/20.

Apologies I haven’t read the thread but these were the self serve options in our house before the kids got old enough to make more complicated things.

Banana and walnut loaf or muffins (handy snack too).
Greek yogurt, berries and nuts (optional honey).
Peanut butter or homemade Nutella (Minimalist bakers recipe is good) on a sandwich or toast. Optional banana.
Alphabites cereal - normal or choc. Freee or Doves farm brand cereals are also good.
Apple and PB.

Some people definitely demonise perfectly fine foods- I'm on a Facebook group where every couple of days someone says "don't use greek style yogurt, it's full of added sugar" which is total bollocks - some greek style yogurt might be made with added sugar, but "greek style" simply means made outside of Greece given it's a protected a title! I make "greek style yogurt" in my yogurt maker - I don't add sugar, I just strain my yogurt so it's greek style.

Buy a toaster. I'd imagine you're already buying a non upf bread. There are some very good options out there.

I've started batch cooking home made mini pancakes and storing them in the fridge for a couple of days. We warm them.up in the microwave and have them with blueberries, bananas or strawberries.

I know that, thats why I view obsessions about UPFs as unhelpful and counter productive, its damaging and missing the whole point of a generally good nutriion diet, people will argue something is UPF and 'unhealthy' and 'bad fr you' and 'I wouldnt give my children that'.

If you can get a toaster with long slots thats give you much more options in terms of what you can toast. Some toasters are made for small uniformly square slices.

@soupfiend I don't see what you see, I've not seen anyone say "yogurts are bad", this thread alone shows how people are trying to steer op to the healthier options of categories of food, like homemade bread. I've been on a lot of these threads and I just see a lot of angry women who don't want to be told an inconvenient truth, switching to organic baked beans is just one small change I've been able to make to reduce our overall consumption of artificial ingredients, on its own it's a small change but it's part of a bigger change I feel the current science is showing will be beneficial to my family. With the majority of UK children having a diet of 80% UPFs and we are seeing a dramatic rise in diet related health issues, there is a problem, why are you trying to downplay it?

I'm very much the same in that I don't demonise food groups, sugar, salt and fat are not dirty words in my house, but the science around ultra processing has completely reshaped the way I looked at industrially produced food. It's not banned in my house, but I am heavily moderating it now.

That's reminded me of one I used to make and need to do again!
Banana, hot milk, oats, peanut butter, cinnamon and a bit of honey all blended
Nice with a spoon of horlicks too

Good to know. Thanks. Yeah sourdough isn't known for it's uniformity!

But I completely agree some people get obsessive about it, and it is something that people with ED have to be very careful with. But no one here sounds aggressively radical, and yet are being spoken to like they're being obsessive.

My kids love getting to sit and watch tv in the mornings on the weekend while I stay in bed! Really can't see a problem with this